I passed who drew the conclusion that I had been wounded at the Front.
The school was next to the church and built to a much bigger scale than the other village buildings. It had been erected in a more forceful, assertive, bulky style, with stone gables and runnels and architraves. In case there should be any doubt about its purpose, one word was carved in capitals above the main entrance: SCHOOL.
I walked past and went on into the churchyard. A stream skirted the edge, the gravestones reaching all the way down to the sloping bank, where moorhens patrolled in a line. Beyond the stream there was an iron fence with a kissing gate and beyond that what looked like a cricket field. Here it was difficult to believe that we were at war, so peaceful and pastoral was the panorama, so far from Flanders in every way. A woman tidying the graves looked up as my shoes scuffed the gravel. She took in my uniform and smiled, though she didn’t say anything. Neither did the vicar, who appeared just then in a black cassock, scurrying like a large moorhen himself out of the church porch. His expression seemed abstracted and I hoped he wasn’t the figure of fun and gossip that our vicar back in Edgewater was. He was surprised to see me, I think, and a brief smile unraveled along his lips. But then he scurried on to the woman tidying the graves and engaged her in conversation.
I entered the church. It was small. A large brass cross glistened on the white cloth of the altar. Two bunches of flowers stood on either side of the cross. As I looked around, I could see that there were flowers everywhere, on the pulpit, next to the organ, and the table where the hymn books were stored—this was a much-loved, much-used place. Two rows of pews at the front of the nave were closed off by small wooden doors: private pews, no doubt belonging to the more important personages or families in the area. I hated that sort of thing—my own family had its pew in our village—but I had never done anything about it.
I sat farther back and thought for a bit. I can’t say that I had been very religious before the war but, by now, after I had seen what I had seen, whatever residue of faith I might have had had been shot to pieces, like my pelvis. At the same time, the Christmas truce had shown me the power of Christianity to influence some men to behave well. Those with faith behaved better at Christmas, but how could I have faith?
But it wasn’t faith that concerned me most that morning. I took out the photograph of Wilhelm. I smiled, recalling Izzy’s misunderstanding and her earnest questioning. It was, I supposed, an easy mistake to make.
Sitting in the pew, I also took out my handkerchief and polished the toe caps of my shoes where they had scuffed the gravel outside. This was another mannerism inherited from my father that I couldn’t shake. He was obsessive about the shininess of his footwear.
The vicar came back in, wished me a polite “Good afternoon” as he went by, and began taking the hymn numbers from yesterday’s service from out of their holder.
With a start, I realized that it must have gone noon. I confirmed it with a glance at my pocket watch. Turning over in my mind the thought that was forming, I got up and went out into the sunshine.
As I approached the school I could see a small knot of mothers gathered by the gate. In the country, unlike the city, many children went home for lunch.
And then, across the playground, I saw her. Sally Ann Margaret Ross. There was no mistake. The same blond hair, the familiar Alice band, the same eyebrows and cheekbones. She was stooping and, from the expression on her face and the stern cast of her mouth, she was ticking off a young child, who had clearly done something wrong, but not very wrong. Maybe Sam Ross wanted the child’s mother to see the infant being rebuked, so the punishment would be reinforced at home. At any rate, the lecture didn’t last long, for she stood up and shooed the child across the playground, toward its mother. She put a whistle in her mouth and her gaze raked the playground for any other infringement. Apparently, Sam Ross—at least on playground duty— was a